Holiday Exchange

This year, Costa Ricans will celebrate Black Friday, although not with quite the same fervor or depth of discounts that we enjoy (or suffer from?) up North. And as Ticos crowd the stores, they'll have to weave between the abundant plastic Christmas trees.

It didn't occur to me that a country without Thanksgiving could still celebrate Black Friday. Or that a tropical country would invest in plastic evergreens. But with all the gringo tv we watch here, I shouldn't be surprised.

What's perhaps more curious is that some holidays transfer better than others. Was Thanksgiving left behind because it only works with an official government decree granting time off of work? Or was Thanksgiving left in the dust because no advertiser found a way to make money off of it?

Meanwhile, the US has yet to adopt any Costa Rican holidays. For those looking for new ways to celebrate, I recommend Juan Santamaría Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Santamar%C3%ADa). Next April 11th, join your Costa Rican brothers and sisters in celebrating the defeat of William Walker, an American from Tennessee who took over Nicaragua in order to legalize slavery.

Latinomics

I've found a blog with a similar title and some interesting entries:

www.latinomics.org

Check it out!

Attitudes Towards Time

I've set up Outlook so I can write an email message at home, press the "send" button, and relax knowing Outlook will automatically send the message when I connect to the internet later. But this is much harder to do with people; I can make plans in advance but people don't take them seriously. For a week I've been trying to organize a high school trip but it didn't come together until the last moment. It's as if the future were wild, untameable, better left to its own devices.

I'm getting ready to move into a new apartment. Living alone on a Peace Corps budget requires some adjustments. However, I'm lucky to have lots of helpful neighbors, which makes the process easier.

I've got three weeks to go and I'm making good progress. I've already got a gas stove, something like a sink, a rice cooker, an electric skillet, some mismatched tableware, and a promise of tables. And my fridge was delivered Monday!

Living alone should also help my projects. I can increase tourism in my community with a new tourist attraction: the world's most ghetto fridge.

Promoting Development

As I watch my English classes shrink, I wonder:

Did these students make a rational, informed decision that there time would be better spent elsewhere? Should I trust them and let them slip away into the night?

Or did I miss a page of my job description? One of my jobs is to help my community develop. As I discussed in my last post, development is increasing your abilities and opportunities (and sometimes, wealth). I've been teaching and organizing my neighbors. But maybe I'm supposed to be marketing to them as well.

If I can make my English classes more exciting--if I can make studying, investing, and contributing to the community more "sexy"--maybe our lives will improve faster. After all, my neighbors' decisions aren't entirely about business; they're also about their personal lives.

But there's a danger here, too. Is it really my job to get involved in these decisions?

Development

"Development" is a process a society goes through. When a society develops, its members gain more control over their lives. It's something like becoming wealthier and more productive, but not exactly.

Sometimes we divide the world into "developed" and "developing" nations. These aren't simply "rich" and "poor" countries; development's implications range from fertility rates to prevailing causes of death to education levels and family structures. Development isn't just for economists.

A lot of governments are concerned about how to develop their own countries. Some governments are also concerned about how to develop other countries, which is a different challenge and in some ways much more difficult.

I think development is mostly about strengthening institutions. If all the systems and organizations and ministries and government departments in a country are well-run, they can address their own problems. And they'll do so in a more efficient and more sustainable way than outsiders could. Sometimes this means training, sometimes it means loans, sometimes it means consulting. Sometimes it means benevolent neglect.

Schools

My town is full of development projects. The schools may be the strongest institution. Teachers are hired nationally by the Ministry of Public Education. They are then assigned to a town which may be very far from home (somewhat like Peace Corps volunteers!). Rural teachers face plenty of challenges, from limited resources to transportation difficulties, but they do their job admirably. They teach not only literacy but also values. School directors organize a PTA-like committee to administer school resources and raise funds from the community. It's good that the community gets involved. Were all the education funds simply sent from San José, there´d be less accountability. But because parents play such an important role in running the schools, the schools here are generally effective.

Local Government

Although most local government functions take place at the county level, Costa Rican towns have the option to form local town associations called "Asociaciones de Desarrollo" or "Development Associations." Any resident over 12 can be a voting member. They meet at least once a year to elect the council members, who have few special powers but can act as their own entity to speak on behalf of the town, to organize projects, collect funds, and request government assistance. These development associations are an important forum for people to talk together about their town's future. Typical projects include building and operating community centers and soccer fields, but can go as far as building a freeway. The downside to development assocations is that, like any exercise in participatory democracy, you need to get people to work together. They require strong leadership. This is a plus in that Development Associations help develop local talent and leadership. Without local leaders, how could development be sustainable?

Giving Things to Kids

The government gives out powdered milk once a month to mothers with young children in exchange for monitoring the child's health. In fact, Costa Rica offers a lot of grants to its citizens. IMAS, or the Institute of Mixed Social Help, offers scholarships to elementary and high school students to help defray the costs of living while in school. Under very limited conditions IMAS offers grants for improving homes or expanding businesses.

The milk program sounds a bit like a "conditional cash transfer" program--it's a payment for using government services. It's a big step up from just giving things away. When you give things away, it's hard to make sure they get into the right hands--and it's also hard to know if they do any good in the long run.

Me

And then there's me. Peace Corps' first goal is "Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women." Although a liberal arts grad with no budget can only do so much, I think we've got a lot of advantages over writing a check. First of all, our limited funds force us to depend on the community. I'll only find support for the most important projects. And although Peace Corps volunteers have access to some external funds, I encourage my neighbors to look first at what they can do with their own resources.

So what am I doing so far?

Teaching English Classes

Teaching Computer Classes

Institutions

The most important thing I can do, though, is help people organize themselves and work together. When people are organized and determined, there's not much that can hold them back--not lack of resources, not lack of assistance from the outside.

Trees

A hundred years ago, this was pure jungle. Very Wet Tropical Forest (just shy of rainforest). There were no towns and no roads, although indigenous people lived here. Mostly there were trees.

There were a lot of kinds of trees. Up to 140 different species in the same hectare. Now we've cut most of them down. It's hotter than it used to be, and it rains less, and there's much more erosion. The river is more dangerous. Now we have roads and pastures and pineapples. We've kept a few patches of forest, though, especially around the streams. We're proud of our majestic trees. This one's a Ceibo.

TREE ECONOMICS

What story would an economist tell about our trees?

Are trees luxuries? A good trunk might be worth a thousand dollars, but instead of cutting it down my friend is proud of his Ceibo.

Are trees public goods? This Almendro is protected by decree of the government. Both Ceibos and Almendros are threatened species, and the endanged Great Grean Macaw depends on the Almendro.

Are trees a crop? San Marcos has thousands of hectares of tree farms, often non-native species like this teak. Monoculture is a problem, but at least it stops erosion. Strangely, it's often these tree farms, and not the primary forests, which receive "environmental service payments" from the government.

Who owns the trees? Many trees can't be cut down without government permission, and even if they fall down they sometimes rot on the ground because the paperwork required to take them out is too much trouble. If we de-regulated trees, we'd avoid that waste. We might even encourage more planting. But maybe we'd also have more trees cut down. We'd release the sequestered carbon (some of it--some might stay in furniture and houses, and some might be re-sequestered by new trees). We'll accelerate the desertification of Cutris. Tough choice.

Illegal logging is one of the top crimes in Cutris. Hey buddy, do you have a license for that log? When we catch tree thieves, the wood--on the road or still in the forest--is given to a nearby educational institution. They front the money to bring it to school property and store it there for up to six months as the paperwork is processed. Then they sell it. San Marcos's high school doesn't have the money or a full-time guard to watch the wood. But the high school in Boca de Arenal makes a lot of money. They might spend $2000 to haul the wood, but then they sell it for $30,000.